Former expat, living in Texas after 10 1/2 years in Norway. Trying to decide the next steps. No matter what, the journey never stops. I will always be a traveler.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

I'm just a big kid

In 1998 the Oslo airport was moved from an island called Fornebu, which is very near the center of town, way north to Gardemoen. (Austinites, this is pretty similar to moving the airport from the old Mueller site out to Bergstrom, but farther.)

They did a nice thing with the land that used to hold the airport. While much of it has been used for mixed use development, current and future, they also took a big chunk of it and turned it into park land. There's a beach and walkways and play areas and some really interesting water features. Rich and I went out there today to check it out.

One of the water features was a sort of fountain, where these low spigots of water would turn on randomly and spit out water onto the ground. You could move these spigots around in a circle. The water coming out of the spigots runs down a small incline, around rocks and obstacles, including these things that look like pinball flippers, that you can also move around in a circle. So, basically, depending on which spigot was running, you could run around twisting the spigots and the pinball flipper thingies to create obstacles and direct the water flow as you wanted around rocks and boulders and stuff. It was SO cool.

There was nobody around but me and Rich, and I got really absorbed in playing Water Goddess, and moved around the flippers and the spigots and hopping from rock to rock watching the water move and shiver and flow in different patterns. I felt like a 6 year old kid. I lost track of time, just twisting and arranging things, seeing how much of an effect I'd have if I just did this or that or whatever thing I could mess around with.

I didn't realize what a giant kid I was being until I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and, thinking it was Rich standing there, was all, "Isn't this awesome? Dude this is so much fun!"But it wasn't Rich, it was a rather amused Norwegian couple watching the 40 year old American woman in black shorts and tank top hopping around in puddles and giggling. Rich was way over there, watching his wife be the total dork that she is, and just shaking his head at what he got himself in to when he took on a life with me.